which the artist, or merchant,--whom in my present lecture I shall
class together,--occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an
honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the
folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any
latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest
likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of
events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter
terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted
himself by the lips of his own saints, far more profoundly than any
verbal preacher; and thus, whether as craftsman or inventor, was likely
to be foremost in defending the laws of his city, or directing its
reformation.

91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is
typically represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick
II.; and that of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war
of the Pisans with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I
wish only to fix your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which
indicated, thus early, the already established ascendancy of the moral
forces which were to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at
least to compel the assertion of some higher principle in war, if not,
as in some distant day may be possible, the cessation of war itself.

The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I
before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the
year l250,--a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis
of vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.

92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Christian and
Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9, lay in the isle